The Vindication of Haruhi Suzumiya
by pbellosom
Summary: As Haruhi and the SOS Brigade struggle to uncover the truth about their mysterious new English teacher, the Doctor tries to discover why the entire universe will end in under a fortnight and what a seemingly ordinary Japanese schoolgirl has to do with it.
1. Prologue

It's been a long time but I return to fanfiction at last. If any of you are waiting on the next chapter of No Need For OVA Kiyone, I apologise for the lateness. I've known for about two years now exactly what I want to do with the story but am finding it intensely difficult to get it written down right. I'm hoping that if I turn my attention to something else for a bit I can get continue so I present to you the first chapter of something completely different. On an unrelated note, I really dislike the last paragraph of this and a rewrite will probably turn up at some point.

* * *

If I am ever to die of a heart attack while still in my youth I want it made clear that the hill on the way to school is to blame. In all likelihood the positioning of the school upon such a hill is part of a conspiracy. Forcing the entire student body to climb that Everest every day is clearly an attempt to keep us too exhausted to do anything but sit quietly through our lessons. The joke's on them though, I'm normally too exhausted to do anything but sleep through most my lessons. Whether the hill is part of a conspiracy or not, it clearly has no effect upon Haruhi. Every morning you can find her without fail sitting at her desk on time, as annoyingly hyperactive as if she'd climbed the hill the previous night and then slept here. Thus when one Monday morning Haruhi failed to turn up on time and instead arrived halfway through homeroom, a big excited grin on her face I had that sinking feeling on impending doom that I had learned told me that life would soon get annoyingly busy.

"Did you hear about Johnson Sensei?" Johnson Sensei was the school's English teacher and had the advantage over many other English teachers in that he actually came from England. Of course him being an "exotic foreigner" had made him the target of many of Haruhi's more outlandish theories and I was already resigning myself to another morning spent convincing her that he was not an undercover member of MI6 investigating a secret Japanese nuclear weapons program.

"He's gone!"

"What?"

"Back to England. Apparently he won the British lottery and went home to claim his winnings; sixteen million of whatever currency they use!"

Even I had to admit this was suspicious, a couple of weeks ago he had infamously launched into a massive tirade about how foolish people who wasted their money on such things were.

"That's not all! According to the teachers who I heard discussing it in the hall, he didn't even enter! He received the winning ticket in the post a couple of days ago. Whoever sent it to him must have known he'd win!"

I sat bolt upright in my seat. I only knew of three people who could do such a thing. Asahina would have theoretically been able to find out what the winning numbers would be in advance, Koizumi would certainly have been able to pull strings to fix the lottery and it was well within Nagato's power to pick the "randomly selected" numbers. Any one of the SOS Brigade could have done this, but why would any of them risk drawing Haruhi's attention just to remove a high school English teacher? But if one of the SOS Brigade was not responsible then who would have the means or the motive to do so?

The morning passed in a blur as I pondered these questions and Haruhi got more and more excited about the upcoming English lesson. Personally I expected it to be cancelled and was quite looking forward to a free period but I was proven wrong as a substitute teacher arrived. I noted that although clearly a westerner he spoke Japanese with no trace of an accent but as there seemed nothing else mysterious about him I returned to contemplating the answers to the questions. However when the teacher wrote his name in English on the board Haruhi gave a loud gasp and I realised with a growing sense of horror that a man in a blue jacket had just entered Haruhi's life under deeply mysterious circumstances and introduced himself as Dr JOHN SMITH...

Crap.


	2. Chapter 1

Two chapters in the same number of weeks! I don't remember the last time I did that for a fanfiction. I'm actually very happy with how this one turned out, even if it is a bit short.

A note on narration; the story was originally going to be written in the third person as it's what I prefer writing with. On the other hand, one of the most distinctive things about the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise is Kyon's style of first person narration. He can't narrate all of it because I need scenes with the Doctor when he's not around, but conversely I can't have the Doctor narrate because I think it's important that there are things going on in the Doctor's head that we don't understand. As a result I plan to be switching between first and third person depending on who the current section of the text is focusing on. Hopefully this'll work and not kill the flow but we'll have to wait and see. This chapter's easy though, it's all the Doctor.

* * *

The TARDIS hung, suspended in the vortex as the Doctor surveyed the damage to the control room. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last he regretted having to remove the Temporal Grace field during the Time War. The Sontarans had managed to get a few lucky shots through the doors before he'd managed to close them and there were burn marks everywhere. More importantly, the bicycle pump connected to a plastic water bottle that he used to regulate the flow of interior time after the original controls broke centuries ago had been completely melted. He made a mental note to repair that before he took any long distance trips.

As he stood there, the silence was broken by a loud beeping noise coming from the device that, for lack of there being any words to describe even the concept in a human language, we shall call the Large Timey Wimey Detector. A second later the Cloister Bell started up as well.

"What?!"

Dashing over to one of the displays, his eyes were bombarded with a stream of bizarre readings. Bizarre but not unrecognised. He'd seem them once before; on the planet Malcassairo in the year 100 trillion. They signified that the Time Vortex was running out, that he was approaching the point at which there was no time further ahead to travel into. But that was ridiculous; he was only in the year 2010!

"What?!"

But there was no mistake, from late January 2011 there was no more time, the end of the universe had suddenly and with no warning moved forward a hundred trillion years. Frantically inputting commands into his computers he saw that the new end of the universe didn't happen instantaneously. It had a centre, a point where it all began!

He narrowed in, it was Earth! This was surprising but not entirely unexpected, that small blue-green planet got more than its share of weird timey wimey stuff.

Japan. Also not entirely unexpected, if something on Earth was causing this it would need pretty advance tech and Japan was one of the more advanced nations. Still way above Earth standards but the Doctor knew from experience that there were loads of labs across the planet dealing with captured or stolen alien technology...

A high school.

"What?!"


	3. Chapter 2

Oh wow, it's a new chapter. I apologise for the delay, I wrote chapter two ages ago and then I was never happy enough about it to actually post it. Had a couple of hours free today so I just said "sod it" and typed up one that I feel is infinitely superior even though it's had a fraction of the time poured into it. In response to questions in reviews; I've got answers to the Mikuru and Yuki problems, whether they'll crop up in story though is another matter as I can't see any of the characters mentioning these incongruities. If I can't work it into the text they'll end up in one of these author's notes somewhere. Also, yeah, this is Tenth Doctor, it's set between Planet of the Dead and the Waters of Mars. So he's heard the prophecy, but he's not yet The Time Lord Victorious.

I'm on a major writing kick at the moment so hopefully new updates will be quicker, though of course I've probably jinxed it by saying that.

* * *

The Doctor grinned as he strolled into the classroom, he enjoyed teaching, probably because of his deep love of explaining things to people which had stayed with him over all his incarnations. It was more than coincidence that the chameleon circuit had made him into a teacher when he was forced to go undercover on Earth. He did however have a problem with knowing when to stop. He still winced at the memory of asking a 21st century child how to break the light barrier in a Year 8 science class, even if it did turn out that the kid knew the answer. He'd had the same problem as a history teacher, even without his memories he'd still caught himself preparing lessons on the First, Second, Third and Fourth World Wars in the year 1914, though he'd dismissed them as dreams. So this time he'd decided to be a language teacher, he couldn't understand how he'd never thought of it before, the TARDIS gave him a perfect command of any language you could care to name, and restricting himself to common phrases from foreign countries meant he was unlikely to mention something he shouldn't.

"Right," he announced to the assembled class, "this is English class which means obviously, that we're going to be speaking some English. Let's see how much you know. You," he pointed at a boy with far too much gel in his hair, "what's your name?"

"Tanaguchi Sensei"

"OK Tanaguchi-Sensei, if I was to ask you..." he slipped into English, "How old are you?" and back into Japanese, "how would you reply?" The student thought for a bit and replied in heavily accented English,

"I am fifteen years old."

"Well done and now for something slightly more difficult, what's your name?"

"Masaki Sensei"

"Could you give me directions to the train station...in English?" The student did so. "And you," he pointed to the girl sitting by the window who was almost jumping out of her seat in excitement at what should've been a relatively dull language lesson. At being asked a question she actually did jump out of her seat and she stood bolt upright, a terrifyingly enthusiastic smile on her face.

"Haruhi Suzumiya!"

So shocked was he by the enthusiasm that the Doctor asked her the very first question in English that came to his head,

"Where can I park my space ship?"

* * *

At some point I shall write a list of all the questions that should not be asked to Haruhi if you value a peaceful or at least vaguely sane life. Prior to this day it would probably have been headed with "Why don't you make your own club then?" but this has since been bumped to second place and replaced with the vastly more life-disrupting "Where can I park my space ship?" Haruhi gave a gasp and seemed completely lost for words, something which I am certain she has never experienced before. Dr Smith gave a nervous laugh and backtracked quickly,

"Car! Car! I meant car clearly, that was a joke. I'm good at jokes see, hahahahahahahahah!" Neither Haruhi nor I were fooled for a second. All the same Haruhi answered the altered question and the lesson after that continued relatively normally. But the damage was done. Haruhi was convinced that this guy was her alien time traveller and no amount of explanations and cover ups could ever disabuse her of this notion. I wasn't entirely sure if I could be disabused of it either to be honest. The chances of this being a coincidence were so slim that it would need an improbability drive to cause it, but as those are fictional and built by aliens anyway it would mean there was some sort of outside involvement. But who? I'd already deduced that Nagato, Koizumi and Asahina would be able to pull something like this, but what possible motive could they have? I remember Asakura mentioning during our fight that there were those who wanted to shake up the current situation, could that be what was happening? I briefly toyed with the idea that he was me from the future, but even if the technology to turn me into a westerner is ever invented; I cannot ever see myself using it. No, on reconsideration it was probably one of the factions trying to break the stalemate.

When the lesson ended and people prepared for the lunch break Haruhi quickly whispered to me, "Did you hear when he asked me about the space ship? That was clearly a message to me that he was ready to tell me he's an alien time traveller! He's probably an ESPer and a slider too!" In the excitement she'd seemed to have forgotten I'd have no idea why she'd suspect he was a time traveller, or perhaps she just didn't care. "Gather the Brigade in the Club Room, I'll come and tell you guys everything he tells me after he does it." And without even waiting for a reply she was dashing up to the front of the classroom where Dr Smith seemed to be looking at something in his bag. I briefly considered joining her, but decided against it whatever he could tell her I wouldn't be able to stop, but if I'd had a quick chance to speak to the Brigade before Haruhi found us we could run some damage control. I headed for the door.


	4. Chapter 3

AN: Sorry for the delay, this has been sitting on my harddrive for ages, but I couldn't get past a very out of character line from the Doctor in the first segment. Eventually I just cut the entire chunk of conversation, the story works just as well without it. Not much really to say about this one other than it's longer than the others.

* * *

As the class ended the Doctor peered into his bag where he had his Timey Wimey detector, the lights on the side indicated that there had been a large spike in the background readings of arton energy since he'd last checked on it, but this was more in keeping with the activity of a temporal rift similar to the one in Cardiff but on a far smaller scale, as opposed to the end of the universe. He heard a very deliberate sounding cough and looked up to find the enthusiastic girl from earlier standing in front of his desk staring at him intently.

"Can I help you...Haruhi wasn't it?" The girl gave a slight smile at the Doctor's accidental informal use of her first name.

"You can drop the act now. No-one in this class is interesting enough to ever consider eavesdropping."

"I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about." The girl gave a short laugh,

"You mean to tell me that there's another John Smith walking around this school in a blue jacket talking about aliens?"

The Doctor had up until this point been speaking on autopilot, his mind considering the possibilities of a miniature rift, but this statement dragged his mind back into the conversation with a lurch. He gave Haruhi a long quizzical look before deciding that he had definitely not met her before. On the other hand she did seem to know him. Realization struck him with all the force of a large truck: he'd managed to cross his own timeline again. As if this situation wasn't complicated enough.

"I don't suppose you have any intention of becoming English and changing your name to River Song do you?" The girl looked at him with a look of intense puzzlement on her face, she still looked unbelievably excited though and the two expressions combined to make her look rather psychotic.

"Why? Should I?"

That had far been too much to hope for, but now it meant that there were two mysterious human females who were making cryptic comments about meeting him in their past and his future. He would've asked her what had happened, she didn't seem to have River's obsession with Spoilers, but given how close to the unexpected end of the universe he was he didn't want to make the situation worse by setting up a paradox. The girl seemed to be taking the Doctor's thoughtful silence as an answer so she continued her face falling,

"You genuinely don't know who I am, do you?"

"Sorry, afraid not." Haruhi stared at him intently before saying,

"Actually, now that I think about it. You do look a lot older than you did three years ago. Maybe the guy I met three years ago was actually a seer, I must remember to add seers to the list of people we should meet, who was hinting at me to come to North High and talk to John Smith when he finally turned up! And now the time has come for me to fulfil the great and glorious destiny that he foresaw for me. So, Real John Smith, what are you? Alien? Time traveller? ESPer? Slider? No wait, Fake John Smith said that he doesn't know any of them. So just Alien, Time Traveller or ESPer then? Or maybe all three?" She trailed off, less due running out of things to say and more because most of her impromptu speech had been given in a single breath.

The Doctor stared at this hyperactive young girl who was so desperate for him to be exactly what he was, that for a second he considered telling her the truth. But then he remembered. His song was ending. He knew he liked to start his new bodies with a new outfit and given that Haruhi was claiming to have met a younger looking version of himself wearing the very jacket he was currently wearing, it would be soon. There was no way he was risking the lives of the people who had faith in him ever again. Not after what happened to Donna. And Astrid. And Martha. So instead he forced his mouth into a grin, and said with as much false cheerfulness as he could muster,

"Just a normal human I'm afraid." The girl laughed, a genuine one this time,

"There's no way I'm believing that. But fine, have your secrets. I never expected it to be as easy as an alien announcing himself at the start of class anyway, that's far less fun. We'll find it out the truth through good old fashioned investigation Dr John Smith." And with that ominous announcement she left the classroom smiling happily. Despite himself the Doctor found himself quite looking forward to seeing her try.

* * *

I only needed to duck my head into the doors of Asahina and Nagato's classrooms to signal to them that I was calling an impromptu SOS Brigade meeting. Koizumi on the other hand was not in his classroom and I searched several other areas of the school before giving up and fuming, headed back to the clubroom. I arrived to find him already there and before I could open my mouth to explain the problem he blurted out,

"Suzumiya's emotional state has been fluctuating wildly for the past hour, what did you do?" Actually for once it wasn't me.

I proceeded to explain the events of the morning in a rushed manner, as we could not be certain how much time we had before Haruhi returned.

"I concur with your suggestion that someone has finally decided to make an attempt to break the stalemate which we have found ourselves in for the past ten months. I know that there are factions within my own organisation that are less than happy with the static state that situation has been in since Haruhi founded the SOS Brigade. Ryoko Asakura threatened that there were similar factions within the Integrated Data Entity who would wish to bring about a change and we have been contacted by a group claiming to be from Asahina's time and that there interests better match our own than the group we have been previously dealing with."

"Wha? Classified Information has attempted to make contact with you?"

While I was appalled at the idea that Koizumi's organisation could ever be considering abandoning the group that had sent us the angel that is Asahina, my attention was drawn by Nagato who had an even more glazed look than normal in her eyes, an expression that I had finally managed to deduce meant that she was doing something involving data.

"There are no other artificial humanoid entities using IDE data channels operating within the vicinity of this school at the present moment. This does not rule out the possibility that Dr Smith is an agent of the Sky Canopy Domain. I am also registering the existence of two unusual data sources within the area. One of these conforms to the description of Dr Smith that we have just received, the other is...troublesome."

The general message I took from this cornucopia of pointlessly fancy words was that neither of these three were responsible for Dr Smith's unwelcome intrusion into my already chaotic life and that further more they didn't know who was behind it either. Furthermore the presence of something that Nagato would describe as "troublesome" was enough to cause me great worry. I was about to ask for more information or this troublesome data source when the door burst open and Haruhi burst in, her meeting with Dr Smith evidently having taken far less time than I had expected. From the determined grin plastered over her face he had at least not confirmed Haruhi's suspicions about him, but on the other hand he completely failed to do anything to cause them to decrease.

"Is he an alien?"

"Of course he is! Though he's trying to hide it." She walked over to the desk by the computer and rooted around for something before triumphantly pulling out what I recognised with a sense of growing dread as her "Ultra-Detective" armband.

"Why do you suspect him?" asked Koizumi in a doomed attempt to get Haruhi to see logic and reason. Doomed because for once, her claims about supernatural beings were actually based upon logical premises. Oh Koizumi, why pick this particular crisis to attempt to stop Haruhi with sensible arguments. I was expecting Haruhi to wave off the question but instead she seemed to decide that the time was right to tell the four of us her most precious and guarded memory. It actually made me feel guilty that the four of us knew this story already. Of course this was before I found out how badly her deranged mind had mangled the events of three years ago.

* * *

The Doctor stalked through the corridors of North High, his timey wimey detector held outstretched in his hand, he attracted a variety of weird looks from the staff and students he passed. Something in this school was definitely causing a high background reading of arton radiation and in the absence of any other clues he had decided to track it down by the highly scientific method of holding the timey wimey detector in the air and walking in the direction that made it "ding" the most, while being careful to avoid the school's kitchens where there was God knows how many raw eggs that could be accidentally boiled.

His progress was leading him slowly towards what his brief orientation had told him was the school's "club-wing" which he guessed made sense. If he was hiding some sort of universe destroying device in a school he would probably place it in a classroom that was used by a non-existent club that he'd invented. But as the source of the radiation grew closer he realised he was wrong, the clubroom was in use, at least judging by the loud female voice emanating from its door. Standing outside, the amount of "dings" the timey wimey detector was emitting was immense and he quickly turned it off for fear of it being heard on the other side. The members of the computer club, whose room was situated opposite, must have been receiving a massive dose of the arton radiation, it wouldn't kill them, but they're immune system would be noticeably better than that of their contemporaries. He edged closer to the door in order to hear what the voice was saying, and realised with a shock that it was none other than Haruhi Suzumiya, somehow he felt he should be more surprised.

"Three years ago on Tanabata night I was breaking into my school." It seemed to speak magnitudes about the other occupants of the room whomever they might be that none of them stopped her to ask why. "I was helped by an older guy carrying who he claimed rather unconvincingly was his narcoleptic sister. This man who was clearly an immensely powerful seer, Mikuru add that to the list of people to search for, told me to come to North High School where I would find aliens, time travellers, ESPers but not sliders, and that I should investigate John Smith when he arrived."

The Doctor knew he should just walk away. This girl was clearly talking about events in his future that he should not yet know about and he'd already resolved not to involve her in what was going on. And yet, from what she was saying she was pretty involved already and the Doctor was never one to walk away from a mystery. Having thus justified doing exactly what he shouldn't he burst open the door and strode in.


	5. Chapter 4

**AN: Heh, I've started term again which means that once again I'm writing to unwind. Hopefully this means that the rate of writing will pick up. Not sure about the Doctor bits in this chapter, I tried to get across how smart he and how much effort goes into the careless persona he builds up but don't think I did a good job. Quite pleased with how Kyon's part has turned out though. The final segment is one of the bits I was most looking forward to writing when I started this fic.**

**

* * *

**

"Did you know that your door's leaking Arton radiation?" That seemed a good opening line. Very dramatic, imply he knew more than he actually did yet at the same time that he was less intelligent than he actually was. He could say it in his slightly higher tone of voice reserved for shocking people into revealing more than they planned to. It'd be good, he'd used a similar tactic on numerous other occasions. He opened his mouth, relishing the five shocked faces staring at him.

"We meet again Miss Suzumiya."

That wasn't right. That's not what he'd said. He'd moved his mouth to make the Arton radiation comment, those were definitely the words that he'd vocalised. But what he heard was something completely different. None of the room's inhabitants had seemed to notice that he resembled a poorly done dub and he wondered whether the sight people were seeing of his mouth moving was being as altered as the sound was, but sadly there was no mirror in this clubroom so he couldn't tell.

Haruhi's face split into a big grin.

"Come to confess? Admit it, we'll get it out of you anyway sooner or later. Save the Brigade some time." The Doctor's eye was drawn to the brightly coloured armband declaring her an "Ultra Detective."

"Brigade?" Odd, that word had came out exactly as planned.

"Yes. This," She turned around, spreading her arms with a flourish, "Is my SOS Brigade."

Well that explained a bit, SOS Brigades were known for attracting the slightly weirder elements of human culture, especially in the early days of the organisation. But the idea that there was something in here capable of affecting his statements was worrying. Still, it managed to narrow down the fact that there was something paranormal monitoring him closely and though he probably shouldn't jump to conclusions it seemed unlikely that it wasn't involved in the approaching end of the universe. He thought he'd try a test;

"My name's the Doctor. I'm an alien. Explain exactly what's going on here and what you're up to." Instead what he head was, "What's an SOS Brigade?"

"We search for Aliens, Time Travellers and ESPers. Oooh and Seers now, Mikuru make a note of that."

Interesting.

"I know you and Kyon." Ok, hypothesises could be formulated, It appeared that his words were only interfered with if he mentioned something that would be recognised as not terrestrial in nature. And this affect had not applied earlier in the classroom, this implied that he was only now being recognised as someone from elsewhere, perhaps one of the three as yet unintroduced Brigade members was actually a shape changer who was responsible. "Who are you three?"

Unfortunately, for all his cleverness he failed to pick up on the fact that the entity censoring his speech considered "What's an SOS Brigade?" as a valid question and so was completely blown away by the answer.

* * *

Dr John Smith burst into the clubroom and my heart sank. I'd known him barely a few hours and I'd already grown to resent the chaos and disorder he was bringing into my already complicated life. After months of effort I had finally managed to wrap my head around the concept that there were supernatural beings in this world, but the idea that there were some who seemed blissfully unaware of the golden rule of "Hide everything from Suzumiya" had left me unprepared for a situation in which this overly enthusiastic man blundered through conversations unaware of the consequences of careless words. From the looks of blind panic crossing Koizumi and Asahina's faces I could see that they were likewise unprepared and I felt a brief guilty panic that perhaps Koizumi and his sinister organisation did not have a backup plan for everything.

Ideally the best solution would be to take Dr Smith aside and explain, while never once hinting at the true nature of Haruhi's powers (it would not do to involve a seventh faction after all), that he should be moving on. A demonstration of Nagato's abilities would be more than sufficient to convince him that this school should be well and truly left alone. Yes, I have somehow reached the point where I am prepared to threaten violence against a mysterious being in order to get him to leave, my thirteen year old self would never forgive me. As the outsider began to ask about the Brigade and appear to stare at his own mouth in confusion (a very tricky facial expression to pull off), Nagato made eye contact with me and gave, what passes from her as, a wink.

"I know you and Kyon." How have you picked up that ridiculous nickname already? "Who are you three?"

"This is Asahina Mikuru, the Brigade Mascot." For once could you introduce us in a ton of voice that doesn't imply that we're just afterthoughts? "Nagato Yuki. And my second in command, Koizumi Itsuki."

Dr Smith gasped.

"Koizumi Itsuki? The Koizumi Itsuki? Really?" He practically ran over to Koizumi and shook him warmly by the hand. "I've always wanted to meet you. But…hang on…you're barely seventeen years old. Which means…Oh…I'm thick. I'm very thick. I'm so very thick, I should've worked it out by how early in the century this is. Not a SOS Brigade, THE SOS Brigade, which means…" He turned to face Haruhi, his arms stretched out in awe and I got a sinking feeling, "Brigade Leader! Oh wow. The SOS Brigade Leader! Oh wow." He bounded over to her and shook her hand as well. "This is an honour. Truly an honour."

My fellow Brigade members and I sat in stunned silence. None of us had any idea how to react or worse, how Haruhi would react.

"Well it's about time the SOS Brigade got the recognition it deserves." Wait, don't tell me you're not even going to wonder how an English substitute teacher has heard of an obscure after school club in a single Japanese school.

"Mikuru, some tea for our fan. So now are you going to tell me who you are?" Dr Smith laughed,

"Not a chance. Tell me, how did you come to form the SOS Brigade?"

All thoughts of interrogation were swept from Haruhi's mind as she sat down to tell him a grossly exaggerated, yet at the same time missing many key details version of how the Brigade came about. I was torn between relief and resentment that my pivotal role in the story was completely marginalised. As she moved into the story of the baseball tournament and it became apparent that she was going to tell him of every single one of the Brigade's activities I sidled over to stand by Nagato.

"What is he?"

"Uncertain, the data is contradictory." She murmured.

At least he hasn't done anything more to draw Haruhi's attention to the unusual.

"That was my doing. His speech is being censored. Any sentences that Suzumiya would consider out of the ordinary are being altered between his mouth and your ears. Likewise the lightwaves are being altered to avoid any discrepancy between his speech and the movement of his mouth."

You can do that?

"I should not have to." If I did not know better I'd have said I heard a hint of exasperation creep into her voice. "Normally I could alter his nerve pulses so that he would have no inclination to utter problematic sentences. It is not working. He is protected."

I don't know what's more frightening, the fact you have that sort of power or that this stranger is immune to it.

Suzumiya's tale had got as far as Itsuki's summer murder mystery holiday when the bell rang for afternoon lessons. Dr Smith leapt up with a yelp apparently having forgotten he was supposed to be teaching a class and dashed out. The rest of us who were not being paid to be in class and thus having far less incentive to arrive on time filed out the classroom at a slower rate.

"There's something very suspicious about John Smith," announced Haruhi as we trudged back to the main building.

Damn, I was hoping you'd forgotten your suspicions what with all the hero worship of you.

"How can someone know of the SOS Brigade and even its lowly second in command but not its glorious leader?"

That's a good question. Curse your perceptiveness.

"Everyone split up after afternoon lessons and search for him. Text the others when you find him and we can follow him home."

You're kidding. We're really going to start stalking the teachers? Anyway, if we spend all night following him to God knows where, when are we supposed to do out homework?

"Just tell any teacher whose work you fail to do that you were on official Brigade business, they'll understand."

Somehow I very much doubt that.

Despite my protestations to Haruhi, tracking down Dr Smith after school was actually a pretty good plan of action. Though I did not intend to text her if we found him. Cornering Dr Smith before Haruhi could have another chat with him could be our best bet of taking control of this situation before I got more out of hand. It was a moot point though, as half an hour into the search I, and I assume the others, received a text from the embodiment of chaos herself:

"We've missed him. Okabe says he's already gone him, I'm doing the same." Her dejected tone told me that Koizumi and his ESPer cohorts would be getting another sleepless night tonight, I almost felt sorry for him. Talking of the smug git, he sent me a text shortly after Haruhi's suggesting the four of us meet at the usual café to discuss this latest development. I met him on the way to the exit and I'd resigned myself to having to listen to him as we made the walk to the station. My spirits rose though as we encountered Asahina in the locker room but with no sign of Nagato we left assuming we'd meet her there. We were wrong.

We instead encountered Nagato just outside the school gates staring at the battered police box outside them. We initially thought she'd been waiting for us and had walked a couple of metres before we realised that she had not joined us. We walked back to the school.

"Nagato?" She kept staring. "Hello?" I waved my hand in front of her face and she turned to look at us. She looked as if she was surprised to see us, but that was impossible right? No way could us mere humans creep up on the all powerful Nagato. "What were you doing?"

"The object's data is heavily encrypted. Attempts to penetrate the encryption and ascertain its parameters are underway." The three of us stared at each other in confusion.

Huh?

"This is the problematic data source that arrived this morning." The other two stayed quiet, clearly at some point over the past few months I've gained the position of the Brigade's official envoy to the Integrated Data Entity and thus it was left to me to say what we were all thinking.

"What are you talking about Nagato? This police box has been here for years."

"It arrived this morning leaving residual traces of Artron energy in the surrounding area. Asahina gave a squeak, clearly recognising the mysterious word in that sentence.

"But that would imply Classified Information."

Of course. Clearly any meaningful enquiry will have to be carried out by me.

"What does that mean?"

"This is not a Japanese police box."

Yes it is. It's in Japan. It has police box written on the side.

"Only in English."

Now that you mention it, that is odd. How have I never noticed that before?

"It's blue."

So it is. Odd that. Now that I think of it, I've never seen any other police box anything like that colour.

"It is made of wood."

And just like that the spell was lifted. The three of us gasped as we stared at the blue wooden box that barely ten seconds ago we'd been convinced was a police box that had always been there. Koizumi recovered first,

"What just happened?"

"A simple perception filter. Had you not been prompted to acknowledge the truth you would, just like every other organic being in this vicinity, have never noticed that this box had not always been here. And once it passed on it way it was so insignificant you'd not even remember it was ever here."

"What is it really?"

She squinted at it intently before finally declaring,

"Coral." She pushed the door which swung open at her touch. I was going to ask for further clarification but what I saw inside took my breath away.


End file.
